“No!” Trix cried out. “It’s not the Faerie Queen! It’s Sorrow!”
“You will break that crystal,” she said as Lizinia flew across the ballroom. “And you will free my lover.”
Lizinia clapped a hand over the false queen’s mouth before she could say any more, but it was too late. Somehow, Sorrow had swapped bodies with the Faerie Queen. And she had stolen Mama Woodcutter’s power, so now her every word would find a way to come true.
Unable to stop himself, Trix removed his finger from the crystal, clasped the scepter by its base, and began slamming the crystal into the floor, over and over again.
“Trix, what are you doing?” yelled Lizinia.
“She told me I had to break the crystal!” he yelled back.
“Then at least hold it up so I can hit it with an arrow!”
“You can’t break the crystal,” he said. “She told me I have to be the one.” He kept hammering the floor with the scepter, even though he knew it would accomplish nothing. He couldn’t tell his body to stop. The crystal cracked the floor, but it did not break. Trix crossed the room, pounding floor, columns, and walls with no end in sight.
“Not the mirror!”
Lizinia’s cry wouldn’t have been able to stop him. There was no time to drum up a clever rhyme. Crystal met glass, and with a great crash the magic mirror shattered.
Framed in the secret tunnel beyond was Vick, standing over the severed head of Old Sassy.
Trix and Lizinia—who had caught up to him—both screamed at the sight. Vick fled into the shadows. Somewhere in the distance, a wolf answered their cry. Lizinia found her wits before Trix did. She wrenched the scepter from his hands and tossed it over to where the pile of clothes and the dagger lay.
“You can break it,” she said with intensity, as if her command might break through the geis compelling him. “In your hands, your bow is as magic as mine.” They made their stances, raised their bows, and drew together. Trix could not let her shoot first. He had to be the one to break that crystal. Sorrow had said so, and so it must be done.
Perhaps Lizinia intended to shoot Vick for the murder of their dear friend…but Trix couldn’t concentrate on that. He couldn’t concentrate on anything but the feel of the bow in his hands, the pull of the string beneath his chin, the brush of the fletch against his fingers. The scepter, even at such a distance, appeared to him in perfect focus. The smoke in the crystal swirled with anticipation.
A wild roar filled Trix’s head, but it was not Bear.
Wolf.
Wolf barreled down the secret stair, ready to kill them all with teeth and claws and speed a thousandfold more dangerous than the Blood Court. Trix would deal with that, but first he had to smash this crystal. He fired his shot, and missed. Lizinia’s bowstring remained taut.
“No!” Trix cried, and quickly grabbed another arrow.
Lizinia turned, and they both fired.
Trix’s arrow found the crystal.
Lizinia’s arrow found Wolf’s heart.
The ballroom around them exploded.
12
The Star
There were no animal voices in his mind, only a steady, high pitched tone that muffled everything else beneath it.
Trix took in a breath, happy to still be able to do so. His chest ached, though any pain he felt seemed to be centered at the base of his skull and in his right arm—the spasming muscles gave no sign that they were ready to relax.
The floor was cold. The air smelled of lightning and singed hair and…cherries?
Trix blinked his eyes. They felt sticky and dry. His nose and mouth were too, as if the explosion had sucked all of the dampness out of the underground atmosphere.
Explosion.
The fey magic. King Hargath. Wolf. Sassy. Vick. Sorrow.
There were so many things Trix needed to think about right now that his fuzzy brain refused to process any of them.
He reached out for Lizinia. She wasn’t there. Hadn’t she been right beside him when he fell?
Trix summoned his strength and rolled onto his right side. His head swam, and he resisted the familiar urge to vomit. All too familiar. He remembered feeling the same after being tossed about on a particular magical ocean.
Magic.
Trix groaned.
Magic would be the death of the Woodcutters.
He pushed himself up—both arms were in pain, it seemed, but only one was frozen—and slowly turned his head. There were bodies everywhere. He hoped they were alive. As he forced himself to his feet it occurred to him: these were human bodies, or human-ish. All of them. The fey magic had returned the animal-blooded members of the court back to their regular forms.
Most of them were naked. A few of them might care about that when they woke.
Unfortunately that subject was low on Trix’s list of priorities.
He needed to fetch that dagger and he had to wake Wednesday and Aunt Joy. Immediately.
Trix clasped his right arm with his left hand, ordering it to stop jumping beneath his skin so that he could better concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other without falling down. Where was Aunt Joy? He had last seen her with Uncle Bear. But Uncle Bear was no longer an actual bear now, and thus considerably more difficult to spot in a crowd of randomly strewn fairy folk.
The ringing in his ears diminished a bit and Trix could make out a moan or two from the bodies he passed. Some on the fringes of the ballroom stood and quietly stumbled away, presumably to regain their bearings in familiar surroundings…and to clothe themselves.
There. To his left. A large man with alabaster skin and silver hair, large enough that Trix could still imagine him as a bear. Beside the large man lay three women of the same age and coloring. Two were bound with pink sashes. One was not.
Aunt Joy.
Trix tried to walk to her and immediately tumbled to the floor. He turned back to unhook his foot from the crook of a body’s elbow.
The body of the black-haired courtier…dead no more.
As if Trix’s contact had shook him awake, the corpse opened his eyes. They were no longer ruby red.
Nor were they soulless.
The irises of the dead man’s eyes swirled black, with flashes of blue and green and purple as the light hit them.
Hargath’s spirit hadn’t found Trix’s dagger, nor had it sought out Lizinia—where was she?—to use as a host. The evil king’s wretched soul had found a new host. The dead man’s empty body had been ripe for the taking
The man that was now Hargath shot up to a sitting position and stood, stiffly, as if actions such as sitting and standing and walking were unfamiliar to him. He made a beeline for Sorrow—the true body of Sorrow that Trix hoped was not still inhabited by the soul of the Faerie Queen. Hargath shoved bodies out of the way, stepping on a few as he passed. He bent and lifted Sorrow into his arms. She was still bound and, blessedly, unconscious.
Trix got to his hands and knees and scrambled over to Aunt Joy. “Please wake up.” He shook her. “Please!” He patted her cheeks. He pinched her. “Please, Aunt Joy, hurry! They’re getting away!” Speaking was painful as his voice echoed sharply inside his skull, but he forced himself to push through it.
Trix looked around for a weapon. He’d left his bow and quiver by the mirror, and his golden dagger remained by the pile of clothes where the scepter had been. Trix had magic within himself, but even if he knew how to summon it, it would not be enough to stop Sorrow and her consort.
As Hargath approached the mirror, Trix gave up on Aunt Joy and switched to the Faerie Queen. Or whom he hoped was the Faerie Queen. He took the risk of removing her gag and bindings, shaking her and pleading all the while. “Get up,” he cried. “Please, get up! I can’t do this alone!”
“You are never alone, little brother.”
Trix cried out at the sound of Saturday’s voice.
“They’re getting away, Saturday! Hurry!”
She and Peregrine crossed the sea of shattered mirror. Th
ey were followed by a large rabbit-like animal with even larger antlers. “Who’s getting away?” asked his warrior sister.
Trix scanned the room from there Wednesday had entered to the darkness of the cave beyond the mirror. Nothing. Defeated, he plopped down on his bottom. “Sorrow.”
“So our evil aunt was here,” said Saturday. “Figures.”
“Where’s Lizinia?” asked Peregrine.
“I haven’t found her yet,” said Trix. “It’s possible she went to fetch some clothes.”
Saturday looked puzzled. “But she doesn’t need clothes, right?”
“Right.” Trix smiled. “But just about everyone else here does.” The rabbit peeked out from behind Peregrine and moved to scratch his fuzzy antlers on the nearest pillar. “Is that a jackalope?”
“It’s Betwixt,” said Saturday. “I’ll explain later.”
Saturday’s clothes were in tatters. Angry red scratches covered her cheeks and chest and arms and legs, all of them parallel, like the claws of a wolf. She wore the remnants of a torn shirt tied above her left elbow. And around her right thigh. Peregrine didn’t look much better.
Before the White Mountains, all of Saturday’s wounds would have been healed by now. Now that his sister had found her destiny—presumably killing the witch…or freeing the dragon…or finding Peregrine—she was considerably worse for the wear.
Trix made a show of examining her injuries. “Getting old.”
Saturday’s wry grin said that she was too tired to punch her little brother. “I’m more worried about Peregrine’s pretty face.”
Peregrine adjusted the makeshift bandage around his temples. “Scars add character.”
Saturday chuckled. “You’re enough of a character without them.”
“I’m so glad you’re here,” Trix said, relieved. “You found my mark on the silver birch?”
“That’s what took us so long.” Saturday smirked. “I assumed you hadn’t just walked in the front door, but there was a “T” on almost every tree from here to Arilland. Did you run afoul of a leprechaun?”
“‘Afoul’ is putting it kindly,” said Trix. He took back anything nice he’d even considered thinking about Vick.
Members of the Faerie Court began to return to the ballroom with piles of blankets and various items of clothing. The slight wisps—Trix assumed they had been the birds—wrapped long scarves around themselves artfully. A bunny in a multicolor tunic—Trix couldn’t decide if he was a page or a jester—hopped about on his two hind legs, frenetically seeing to this and that with the haste of someone who is constantly in a panic about something.
“Where has she gone?” The commanding voice was not that of the Faerie Queen but Aunt Joy, now fully back to her senses. Wednesday, on the other hand, had returned to her blissful, magic-muddled, half-present state. She had swathed herself in wisp scarves and was dancing about the room, weaving in and out around bodies as they woke.
And Saturday had missed it completely. Only Trix and Lizinia and Trebald would remember Wednesday as the woman she might have been. Trix’s heart hurt.
And his stomach growled.
“Hargath possessed the body of the dead courtier and stole Sorrow away,” Trix summed up plainly. “I didn’t have the strength to stop them alone. I’m so sorry.”
Aunt Joy shook her head. “That was the wisest course, young man. With all the power at her disposal right now, I’m not sure even I could have stopped my twin sister alone.”
Trix shivered, even as the muscle of his right arm spasmed again. It was a dreadful thought. “Sorrow was the Faerie Queen,” he said. “I know she stole my birthmother’s gift of disguise, but this went far beyond that. Sorrow’s spirit completely took over a body that was not her own.”
“Spirit magic.” The answer came from Uncle Bear, now clad in trousers too short for his long legs. “It is the gift of my wife, Snow White.” In human form, Uncle Bear was taller and wider and maybe even stronger than Papa, characteristics that made Trix both envious and homesick all at the same time.
“The Faerie Queen came to me in a vision and summoned me here to the Hill,” said Trix. “But it wasn’t the Faerie Queen at all, was it?”
“It was not I who came to you.”
Everyone in earshot of those words bowed and curtseyed to the Faerie Queen.
“Your majesty,” said Trix, Saturday, and Peregrine.
“Corinna,” said Aunt Joy.
Uncle Bear quickly knelt and helped her sit up. “I did not know you to send for you, Trix Woodcutter, but I will be eternally grateful that you came.” Her eyes scanned the family before her. “I thank all of you for bringing the fey magic back into the world. We owe you our lives.”
“It could have gone a lot better,” Trix mumbled
“Most things that happen in this life could always turn out better,” said the Faerie Queen. “But it also might have been a lot worse.”
Uncle Bear’s reassuring hand was so large that it swallowed Trix’s shoulder. “This is not over,” said Bear. “We live to fight another day. I, for one, will not stop until my wife is freed from Sorrow’s spell.”
“If anyone is to blame, it is me, child,” said Aunt Joy. “I am my sister’s keeper.”
“A job no one gave you, but one that you have taken upon yourself regardless,” said the Faerie Queen. “I blame you only for being bullheaded and loyal, my dearest goddaughter. Only a fool would blame a person for the actions of someone else.”
Trix smiled. Aunt Joy was godmother to the Woodcutter siblings, but he had never considered that Mama and her sisters would have had a godmother as well. It made sense, as close as their grandfather had been to the Faerie Queen, that her majesty would be the fey guardian of the Mouton sisters.
This was the only way in which Trix was not a true Woodcutter—Aunt Joy had never given him a nameday gift, as she had with all his foster brothers and sisters. Not that it mattered to him, really. Trix was a Woodcutter sibling in so many other ways.
“Forgive me,” the Faerie Queen said to Trix. “I don’t feel that I have the right to ask anything more of you, dear boy, but…what happened here?”
It wasn’t a strange question; she’d been bound and gagged and unconscious for most of the time. Trying to put the answer into words, however, was tougher than it should have been. Voices and magic and memories were still a jumble in Trix’s spinning head
Trix screwed up his nose as he tried to remember everything in the right order. “I was placing the scepter on the pile so Lizinia could shoot at it with her magic arrows and try to destroy it, when Sorrow—I thought she was you, your majesty—stopped me. She commanded me to break the crystal immediately. Me, not Lizinia. I had no choice but to do my best and I smashed everything with it”—he gasped—“including your magic mirror! I’m so sorry.”
The Faerie Queen waved his apology away. “Think nothing of it. I will ask the dwarves to make me another one.”
Any other day, Trix would have been stymied by the fact that he’d broken an enormous, sacred, possibly ancient object and not gotten in trouble for it, but not this day. “Vick was back there and—oh! He killed Old Sassy!”
“Who’s Vick?” asked Saturday.
“The filthy leprechaun,” said Trix.
“That dear horse,” said Peregrine.
“Lizinia was with me when we saw what happened to Sassy,” said Trix. “She was very angry. She drew her bow, but I couldn’t let her break the crystal. I had to be the one to break it. Sorrow compelled me. Lizinia shot…Wolf! He attacked us, and she shot Wolf! Oh, no.”
In a heartbeat, Bear leapt up and crossed the room to where the mirror had been. Trix, fueled by the anxiety of his memories, was close behind.
Poor Sassy’s severed head still sprawled gorily across the threshold from the once-hidden cavern into the ballroom. Just past her nose, face down on the stone, was a man.
Trix tilted his head the way Lizinia always did (where was she? He was beginning to worry). The man
lay where Wolf had fallen, but this body was not the one Trix had expected. This was not the hirsute companion that had traveled with them on the road. This man was fully human. His long hair was thick and had the same multicolored attributes, but he was far less fuzzy from head to toe, and thus seemed far slighter. Beneath the now-sparse hairs Trix could make out the cords of his strong muscles, well-defined beneath his light brown skin.
It was easy for Trix to believe that a wolf had muscles like that. Could it really be Wolf? Why would the fey magic have changed him so drastically?
Saturday tossed a blanket to Bear. He thanked her for it, covering his friend before turning him over. Wolf’s face was now as human as any of the fey now staring down at him. His eyes were closed; long lashes brushed his cheeks. Despite the mass of hair on his head, he was clean shaven. Even his eyebrows seemed thinner.
There was also no wound on his breast where Lizinia’s magic arrow had pierced his heart, only a many-pointed star the size and shade of a gold coin. Bear hung his head, silver hair falling over his face to hide his torment. He placed one large hand on his friend’s lifeless body, right over that star.
Bear growled deep in his chest—the words that followed were not the prayer Trix was expecting. “This is not how it’s supposed to be.”
Apparently, Fate agreed.
Wolf turned his head and his chest rose ever so slightly.
Trix stepped back as friends and family surged in to assess Wolf’s state, the Faerie Queen among them. Trix took the opportunity to scan the ballroom crowd again for Lizinia. Even in the tumult, the golden girl should have been easy to spot.
“Lizinia!” he cried out for good measure, but there was no answer. “Where have you gone?” he whispered more to himself than anyone.
“He took her,” said a voice. “Wretched leprechaun. Bad news, the lot of them.”
Trix spun around, but the only people close to him were the ones worrying over Wolf. “Who said that?”